The hard disk drive (HDD) industry continues to develop array reader based magnetic recording technology in which multiple read heads are simultaneously used to read data from a magnetic recording medium. Here, it is desired to electronically steer the array reader to provide optimum signal pick-up from a track of the recording medium, thereby reducing read errors and improving performance of the array reader. Achieving these goals is at least in part accomplished by applying proper equalizing coefficients to the data signals generated by each read head, for example, by applying coefficients that are estimated to correspond to the locations of the read heads on the track. However, the locations of the read heads on the track are difficult to estimate, especially for read operations that occur shortly after the read heads relocate to the target track and for read operations in which consecutive sectors desired to be read were not written sequentially. This leads to a mismatch between the locations of the read heads and the equalizing coefficients, which causes degradation in the quality of samples at an equalizer output. Accordingly, it is desired to develop devices and/or methods that address these and other problems of the related art.